August focus: Domestic Cleaning Service

Getting to and from your bookings

You WILL need a Car

The only way to be really successful in this type of business is to have your own car or van so that you can get to and from your bookings. Seeing as you will not have to transport heavy equipment you can still be very successful with a small car – you don’t have to have a van. But due to the fact that you will need to carry a Kit with you that includes a vacuum cleaner, you should at least have a car. Your main source of income will come from people that live in upper middle to upper income areas, which are not always accessible via Public Transport, so unless you have your own reliable form of transport it would be wise not to start this business until you do. Plus it would be very difficult to carry all your supplies with you on the train or bus.

Check your street directory, use your navman or google for the address the night before you go to your first booking with a new client. It would be a shame to lose the booking because you got lost and could not find your way, unable to follow the street directory (or, because you headed out in the general direction and were not carrying a street directory in the car in the first place).  Or because you don’t have a Navman to show you the way.

Using your Diary and Roster

You need to have your diary with you during the day when you receive calls or when you return calls, and write your new booking into your diary as soon as it is confirmed. If it is a weekly client you can place the booking in your diary on that day of the week for the next few weeks so that when another booking comes in you know what your availability is. Fortnightly clients can be written in every two weeks on that day. It is always a good idea to use a pencil when writing these bookings in, as clients have a habit of changing their plans around at the last minute.

In the previous article there is a roster form that is provided as a pdf document. There is a link to it at the top of the article, above the image of the roster itself. If you take a look at that roster form you will see that it is set up with week one and week two. This is to accommodate weekly, fortnightly and 4-weekly clients. The whole year rotates from week one to week two on your roster. Set your business up so that the first week that you start you are in week one, the next week is week two, and then back to week one again. If you follow this structure you will find it easy to plan and keep track of your bookings. It is best not to offer a 3-weekly service to clients that request it, as it will interrupt your whole roster and interfere with other bookings. Give your caller the option of a 7-day service, a 14 day service or a 28-day service, but not a 21-day service.  A 21-day service will cause too many interruptions and will be very difficult to accommodate when you have a lot of bookings.

Transfer all your permanent bookings across to the roster form All permanent bookings go onto this roster, and one-off bookings get written into your diary. Keep your roster somewhere where you can easily refer to it, for example, held onto the front of the fridge by a magnet or blue-tak. Only permanent bookings get recorded on your roster, however both permanent and one-off bookings go into your diary ie: all work done for the week.

You can read in next article about: Working as a Couple

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Free From the Gilded Cage is the education arm of the Loving Heart Foundation Australia where we teach the basics of self-employment and basic budgeting skills. This is so that women can learn the skills needed to manage their own lives without feeling trapped in a relationship with a man who is beating them up. With these skills they can easily leave him.

Update: The first novel in our series of seven written to raise funds for those whom we assist is now published. It is the courageous story of a young teen growing up in a home filled with domestic violence, and how she manoeuvres her way through such a difficult situation. Click here if you’d like to know more about this novel.

Click here if you’d like to be taken to the site where you can purchase this novel.